Solaris

Seen twice in college

Hari is the load-bearing element for me. Without her, this is a lot of visual and discursive wandering. Characters in Solaris and Stalker sway loosely when they speak nihilistically. Maybe there's a Russian social habit in there. The point is these movies can be nonchalant to the point of emptiness. They're still provocative and profound to me, but cadaverous. Hari injects blood straight from her own confused heart. It distinguishes this from Stalker, for which I had negligible interpersonal empathy (and the only woman was the pathetic archetype). Solaris without Hari is still fascinating, but Solaris with Hari weighs on me. She's a tragic but noble sacrifice -- "she", meaning whatever persists through her incarnations, suffers sorely in representing the holographic power of the Ocean. She endures extreme pain, the terrifying absence of identity, and finally, willful nonexistence. And she makes me feel all of this, which impresses me given the historical-cultural context of the film. After Stalker, which is actually seven years later than Solaris, I wouldn't expect ardent empathy to hit me in this film. I even loved the character and what she represented. She isn't wholly human, but I feared Kris expelling her, me feeling more empathy for her than anyone else -- which is perhaps deliberately ironic. This has been done before, though I don't remember where -- the least human character gets the most empathy.

It's a singular cinematic romance. She's some form of hallucination, very sentient, piecing identity and humanity together as she's killed and resurrected several times. As she builds awareness he sinks to blissful ignorance. Briefly they meet in the middle and are happy. Then she almost transcends his humanity with a selfless choice to abandon him. The choices of Kris for the surreal Hari are original in film as far as I know.

This sounds like corny sci-fi, but tone matters. Per other Tarkovsky, it's radically meditative. It can't be corny because nothing is cliché. Tarkovsky seems intentionally esoteric and scholarly -- though again, the Hari element inserts heart into an otherwise academic thesis.

The tone, themes, and pathos merge for an affecting picture, if you can stomach it.